Alastair was here. He was here. Glenna took the parchment from him and threw her arms about him, whispering under her breath, “It took you long enough.” She turned and approached the earl with the swagger of a conquering warrior. “You say a royal marriage must be witnessed. You claim if there is a witness, the marriage stands?”

She lay the parchment down on the rough hewn table, rolled it open and pressed down. “Here, my lord. Before you is the witnessed document, scribed at the abbey at Beauly, and sealed by the prior himself.“

Lyall was right behind her and he laughed under his breath, telling her he was aware that they had just taken their opponent’s queen. His arm slipped around her waist as she straightened and he gave her a quick wink. She smiled and placed her hand on his shoulder.

Together they could do anything, she thought.

There was another commotion at the door and El appeared, his face excited, his smile wide. “Glenna! Glenna look! Look what we have brought you!”

She heard a strangely familiar scampering sound, then a familiar bark and her heart leapt in her chest and something joyous swelled in her. Glenna’s hand fell from Lyall’s shoulder as he stood abruptly. Then she heard Lyall finally say her hound’s name under his breath, whispered almost like a prayer. Next she heard him shout it, ”Fergus!”

Her hound leapt toward them both, huge and shaggy, high in the air. Through a blur of fresh tears she had a glimpse of a silly shaggy grin and a tail wagging, awkward feet flying…

Fergus sailed right past them, landing awkwardly on the top of the table, skidding and sliding, pawing the air and the table.

“Oh, lud! Fergus….” she called out, her voice drifting off in horror, her hands to her mouth as she watched the goblets spill left and right, and the ewer wobble and tilt from Fergus’s huge cumbersome paws. The wine spread out like blood on a battlefield, pouring over the table and right onto the earl, while the loud clank of pewter goblets hitting the stone floor and rolling all over sounded around her.

Lyall pulled Fergus off the table as she knelt down in front of her hound and let him lick the tears from her flushed cheeks. “Fergus.”

She pulled back and caught the wet glint in Lyall’s eyes, and she thought of Mairi’s story, of Lyall at ten, the young lad who could not save his father, his brother, their home, and finally a beloved dog he called Atholl, the last animal he had ever named because he carried that regret and sorrow and guilt of his failure all those years since. His bright red eyes were staring at the remnant of the arrow wound, a scabby deep dark hole covered in some kind of dried poultice. Her hand touched her hound and scratched his floppy ears, and exchanged a look of deep love with her husband. Neither was lost to her, as she had thought. Her happiness was sudden, a live thing, golden as that knight she had watched dive into the sea. All of it warmed her blood and brought more tears to spill down her face. She felt her brothers move to her side.

She swiped at her eyes and turned back to the action at the table, where the baron stood at the opposite end of, looking dumbfounded at the earl, who had not moved amidst all that had happened.

But his squires had. They were rushing with cloths, sopping up spilt wine and scrambling to wipe the mess while the Lord Chancellor sat with his hands out in front of him, staring down at the wet red wine stains spreading over his tunic and earl’s belt. One of the squires bent toward the floor, then straightened, holding up the sodden parchment in his fingers as wine mixed with dark bleeding ink and dripped from the edges of the now illegible document. Only the prior’s circular seal was still visible, and it was slowly melting away, taking with it the most dangerous emotion to believe in--hope.

Glenna gasped, panicked. “You did read the document, my lord. You saw it was witnessed.”

“Nay,” the earl said, standing and frowning, “but—“

“It matters not because the witness is here.” The prior was standing in the doorway, watching, a wry smile on his lips.

Alastair leaned closer and said under his breath, “He is why we took so long. The man travels on an ass that moves as quickly as a sloth.”

There was hope again, still dangerously at risk, but there all the same. She threaded her arm through his, gave him a grateful kiss on his rough cheek and said, “Thank you.”

“’Twas his idea, once he heard why we were there. An abbey like Beauly needs patronage. I imagine the opportunity to score the fat purses of Montrose and Sutherland was all too tempting.”

Ramsey had joined the earl. “I am sorry for the chaos, Valan.”

“I reek of wine.” The earl shook his head and gave a wry laugh. “My own household makes this look calm, Donnald.”

“I, too, am sorry, my lord. I had thought my hound lost to me. But we are here about my marriage. I would have your decision now,” Glenna said to Earl Valan. “Surely you will not question the witness of the prior. To do so would question the validity of every marriage in the land. You cannot deny the Church. The only better witness would be my father.”

“Or myself,” the earl said and Glenna dared not hope he meant what she thought.

“You will wed here and now,” he continued. “A ceremony with Montrose and myself as witnesses and standing for your father. I am certain the prior will be more than pleased to wed the two of you.”

They had won. Glenna’s face broke into a huge smile.

Lyall stood and glanced at his stepfather, who nodded, and then gave the earl a slight bow of respect. “Thank you, my lord. You will not regret your decision.”

“Nay,” the earl said and clasped Lyall’s arm in friendship. “But if Lady Glenna is anything like her headstrong sister, my Cait, you might live to regret yours.”

* * *

The candles on the wall prickets had long since burned down and the moon was bright silver and could be seen through the arched window of their bedchamber, dominating a dark, clear sky filled with enough stars to make one believe in things like redemption, love and God. The wind had started and awakened him. Even now he could hear the whistle of it across the battlements outside.

From the carpet near the bed came a slight canine snore. Fergus slept on his side, contented in contrast to the deep wound that was still visible and haunting. That the Gordons had come upon him in their search for Glenna and taken him to the abbey was what had saved him.

He lay back on the goosedown pillows with a sigh, crossing his arms behind his head, his bare hip still touching his wife’s. Relaxed. The part of him that could never truly rest, that tenseness he’d carried deep inside of him for so long was gone. Love filled him like the swelling of the wind outside, and he took a deep breath of contentment. The scent of roses and woman filled his senses.

Mairi and his mother had placed wildflowers, ivy, and roses in vases and urns all over the room, and a hundred candles had lit the room when they'd finally escaped the celebration in the hall below and locked themselves away from the rest of the world. A pitcher of wine and bowls of dried fruit, nuts and apples were on that table. Next to the bed, the fattest candle, chapel candles that could burn for days, sat on the nearby table, next to a vase of deep, dark red roses, the last of them to bloom this year this mother had said.

His wife lay next to him in his bed, asleep, wearing only his wedding gift to her, a silver diadem he had made and set with stones he had won years back in a tourney in Normandy, and a drop in the center of a large and perfect pearl he’d found in the River Tay, on a night when he had understood what love was.

This night, as she knelt before him, he had set it on her head in place of the flower bridal wreath she had worn when she came through the door to the chapel at Rossi, where earlier all had witnessed their vows and final bond. He stared up at the bed canopy, lost in thought. A sudden buzzing sounded and before he could move, a bee lit on the underside of his arm. He froze, watched it walk slowly across his skin and waited for the inevitable stung.

But nothing happened. The bee flew off, and crawled inside the center of one of the roses by the bed and disappeared.

“You look pleased and content,” Glenna said sleepily, and she moved closer, comfortable enough with him to have flung one bare leg over his, settling her head against his shoulder, her breast heavy against his ribs.

He touched her, let her softness fill his hand, then he turned and covered her body with his, settling between her legs. “I am content, wife,” he said. “And you look hungry.”

“I am.” She linked her arms around his neck and smiled, the kind of smile he could live inside and never want for another thing…his Glenna, his wife, the woman whose faith in him restored his trust and his belief in the good of the world. She was the thief who had stolen his horse, and his heart, and saved him from himself. He smiled. The light in her eyes said it all: she was looking up at him as if she expected something wonderful to happen.

But for Lyall, something wonderful already had.